Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Jon's new job requires him to travel quite a bit and this week he is gone on his first trip. He left last Tuesday and will be back Friday. Being apart for 10 days is a long time. We expect that a lot of the trips will be even longer. Jonah and I have been doing fine on our own, but we certainly miss Daddy. He's been putting in 12- and 16-hour days and we've had a hard time catching each other to talk on the phone. When we do talk either he's tired, or I'm tired, there are jets and helicopters taking off in the background on his side, or Jonah is being totally distracting on my side. I'll be so happy when he is back and we can just share life together again.

Yesterday was my birthday, so rather than sit around feeling sad that Jon wasn't here to make me feel special, I decided to make my own special day by throwing a birthday brunch. I invited four moms and associated toddlers and we had a wonderful time! I made an egg/sausage/cheese/potato casserole, my mom's homemade cinnamon rolls, heart-shaped brownies and fruit salad. All the food turned out fantastic (if I do say so myself) even though I had never made any of the recipes before. I served sparkling grape juice and raspberries and cream-flavored coffee. I used my nice table cloth and matching cloth napkins. I think the ladies appreciated the grown-up time together in spite of toddlers spilling cups of pretzels in the living room and fighting over my birthday balloon. I had an Elmo DVD from the library that seemed to help keep the kids from "bothering" us too much. It turned out to be a fabulous birthday.

Jonah is of course learning more every day and keeping me totally entertained. I've felt bad for him since Jon's been gone so we've been doing more wrestling and chasing around the house than usual. It's actually been very fun to bond that way. We have our little games we play and Jonah just revels in the anticipation of knowing that I'm going to tackle him or throw him on the couch. I love seeing him laugh and have so much fun. One of our favorite games is for him to pretend to walk away and I say, "Bye bye, Jonah. See you later." Then I grab him and pull him back before he can get anywhere. This is great because he loves it and thinks it's so funny and I can sit in the same place and I don't have to stand up or run around.

Today I discovered a new way to make him laugh. We have a GPS in our car and it talks when it's giving directions. We got annoyed with the lady's voice and Jon discovered that you can set it to different accents. So now we have an Australian gentleman directing us around town. Today I imitated the Aussie voice and Jonah thought it was hilarious! It added new joy to our car ride!

Jonah loves playing with friends and if I tell him we're going to see friends he gets very excited about "friendies". He seems to pick up on things and know we're going to see friendies even when I haven't told him. Tonight we were invited to dinner a the home of a young couple from church who don't have kids yet. Jonah thought we were going to see friendies so I told him that yes, we were seeing friendies. Just a few minutes after entering their apartment Jonah got this confused look on his face. He started walking around asking, "Friendies? Friendies?" Apparently grown-ups do not qualify as friendies in his mind. I got the feeling he felt betrayed. "Mom! You said there would be friendies and they aren't here!" It took me a while to convince him that big people are friendies too.

I used to always know what Jonah was saying because there was definite context. He was either talking about something right in front of him or copying something he just heard. As his verbal abilities increase he's starting to talk about whatever pops into his head. This requires a little more effort on my part to discern what he's saying. It's particularly frustrating in the car because he just jabbers on totally randomly. I finally realized that for the most part he's just exercising his vocabulary and doesn't require much of a response from me. At lunch today I gave him a few tortilla chips. He held out his chip to me and said, "Sosa! Sosa!" I couldn't figure out what he was saying, but he wouldn't quit. He picked up another chip, "Sosa!" Finally I realized he wanted salsa on his chips. Quite the working little mind!

Sorry the last few posts have been long and without pictures, but Jon took the camera with him on his trip. My friend got some hilarious pictures of Jonah and her little boy at a play-date on Monday. I asked her to email them to me so I'll put them up when I get them. Stay tuned!

Thursday, February 19, 2009

It is way past my bedtime so I will try to be brief, but all of a sudden I felt the need to get down on "paper" Jonah's latest habits, tricks, and other cute things. I'm so afraid I might forget what he was like at seventeen months.

A few weeks ago we visited some local caverns and went on the guided tour. Jon had to carry Jonah the whole way because it wasn't stroller accessible and there was a strict "no touch" policy. There was also a no food or drink policy. So Jonah provided the group with running commentary throughout the entire tour - seriously he never stopped talking. His main observation during his time in the cavern was, "Rocks!" Over and over again. What can I say, he calls it like he sees it. This was interspersed with requests for just about every food and drink he could think of and picking out words he knew from the tour guide's talk and parroting them back. "No touch." "Change."

He loves lotion and diaper cream, especially Desitin. I'll go to get him up from a nap and he'll say, "Diaper. Cream. Desitin. All better." He loves lotion so much that last night when he dripped milk on his hand he decided to pretend the white drops were lotion. "Otion. Handies." While rubbing his hands together.

He's just starting to get into pretend play with his teddy bears. He likes to wrap them in blankets and put them "ni-night" and feed them and give them drinks from his sippy cup. The other day I let him have a teddy in the high chair and he was feeding it grapes and told it, "Chew chew chew!" just like I say when he has a mouthful of food.

He'll pretend anything is a phone. A sock can be a phone, a mitten, a hairbrush, a baby monitor, a remote, anything.

There are things I didn't realize I said until Jonah started saying them. I didn't know I said "nope" instead of "no", but now Jonah says "nope" all the time and when I started paying attention I realized how much I say it. Like when he's full and doesn't want another bite of food he'll say, "Nope! Nope!" I also didn't notice that I much tell Jon, "Bye! Have a good day!" I still don't think I really say "have a good day" very much, but now when saying goodbye to someone, Jonah often includes, "Have a good day!" (The "have a good" is kinda mushed together so it sounds more like "ofagoo DAY")

On our recent flight to Chicago Jonah was down on the floor exploring. Next thing I knew he was saying, "Feet! Toes!" Uh oh. I turned around to the guy sitting behind me, "Is he touching your feet?" "Yeah." At least he was smiling.

He counts backward and forward between two and five, but NEVER says one. I can only get him to say "one" when I ask how old he is. He loves the alphabet song and his favorite letter is "W". He also likes "C", but W is the only letter he chimes in on when I sing the song.

He loves to pray at meals and wants to pray not only at the beginning, but at random intervals throughout the meal. He'll be talking about something else and then just reach his hand out to me, "Pray?" So we pray!

The need to discuss passing gas has been inherrited down from my mom's side of the family and Jonah always has to inform me when he has made "toots".

But to balance out the "potty talk", he is very good about saying "please", which makes me very happy.

Friday, February 13, 2009

This is what you get when you cross an energetic and adventurous toddler with concrete and gravel driveways. The scrape on the top of his forehead near the hairline is from trying to pick up a basketball and doing a somersault over it into the concrete. The other scrapes from the forehead, down the cheek, on the nose and on the chin are from a trip on the brick entryway of our house, which sent him flying head first into the loose gravel driveway. We brought him in the house and had to pick all the rocks out of his face. I suspect this is only one of many wounds to expect over the coming years of raising a little boy.